Silent but Effective: DSS Strategy Delivering Results in Security Fight

Because an arms shipment was stopped last week, a market is open somewhere in Nigeria today. There is less noise in the village because a bandit kingpin is in court. For the first time in years, a child in the Southeast went to school this Monday morning without being scared. These things didn’t just happen; they happened because of choices made, information gathered, and actions taken by an agency that most Nigerians don’t think about very often, unless they have a reason to.

The Department of State Services doesn’t hold press conferences to show off its successes. When a terror cell is broken up or a truck carrying 164,000 rounds of live ammunition is stopped before it gets to its destination, people don’t talk about it on social media. When a fugitive is finally caught after 13 years, its agents don’t take a bow. Or when a financier who funded massacres from a UAE business finds that his accounts are frozen. That’s just how the job is. The best security is invisible; you only notice it when it has a crack.

But being invisible costs something. Nigerians can’t judge it fairly if they don’t see the results. When the only stories that come out are the ones that cause trouble, like arrests, political cases, and headlines that make people suspicious, the whole picture is lost. This piece tries to bring that picture back. The DSS has been following a plan for the past 18 months that is slowly, quietly, and eventually making Nigeria safer. Anyone who wants to can see the proof.

The DSS’s plan is based on a simple idea: if you get rid of the commanders, the hierarchy falls apart. In the North, where a string of high-profile arrests have cut off the heads of some of Nigeria’s most dangerous terror networks, this has been shown in the most dramatic way.

In August 2025, operatives caught Mahmud Muhammad Usman, the self-proclaimed Emir of Ansaru and one of Nigeria’s most wanted terrorists, along with Mahmud al-Nigeri, who was his Chief of Staff.

Around the same time, DSS agents arrested Abubakar Abba, the head of the Mahmuda group, a Boko Haram splinter group that terrorized communities in Kwara and Kogi states and forced thousands of people to leave their homes. The US Embassy said that these operations were a big step forward in the fight against terrorism. Usman has already been sentenced to 15 years for one of the many crimes he committed, and the prosecution is still going on for the other crimes. Three months later, after a 13-year manhunt, Ansaru commander Abdulazeez Obadaki was caught again. He was accused of planning the 2012 massacre of worshippers at the Deeper Life Bible Church near Okene, Kogi State.

The secret police have also shown that they can be creative and use intelligence to do their jobs. In May 2025, two kidnapping kingpins who were behind violent attacks along the Sokoto-Zamfara axis were found and arrested at Abuja and Sokoto Hajj camps while pilgrims were being screened before they left. In Kaduna State, joint DSS-Army operations in one quarter had 34 successes, arrested 54 suspects, found weapons ranging from RPGs to heavy machine guns, and freed 79 people who had been kidnapped. In the FCT, a joint operation in September 2025 took out bandit leader Abdullahi Umar, also known as “Duna.” His gang had kidnapped a high-ranking government worker and demanded a ₦150 million ransom. A 90-day undercover surveillance operation in Osun State broke up an ISWAP cell that was training to make explosives.

The Yelwata killings in Benue State and the Angwa Rukuba killings in Plateau State were two of the worst massacres in Nigeria’s recent history. They put the government’s promise to bring those responsible for mass violence to justice to the test. The DSS helped the government pass that test in both cases.
On June 13, 2025, gunmen attacked the Yelwata community in Guma LGA of Benue State. They killed at least 150 people and hurt 107 others. The attacks were condemned around the world. President Bola Tinubu went to Benue State to personally express his condolences and told security agencies to find the people responsible. The DSS acted quickly, as they should have. The Inspector-General of Police said that 26 people had been arrested within 11 days. The DSS had filed six separate terrorism charges against nine suspects in the Federal High Court, Abuja, by August 2025. Two more suspects were charged with attacks that were thought to be revenge. The prosecution is still going on, with the Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation in charge. Courts are actively hearing evidence, and eight government witnesses are ready to testify.

The Angwa Rukuba case was similar in that the President promised to do something and the DSS followed through. On Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026, gunmen killed more than 30 people, including children, in Jos North LGA of Plateau State. This made people all over the world and in the US very angry. President Tinubu went to Jos and told the people there in person that those who were responsible for the killings would be punished. The suspects were arrested between April 3 and April 10, 2026, right after the President gave the order. After that, the Plateau State Government charged five people arrested by the DSS with criminal conspiracy to commit terrorism, culpable homicide, illegal possession of firearms, and illegal dealing in arms and ammunition. As the case moved forward, courts already ordered them to be held in DSS custody.

The two cases mentioned above are important for more than just the individual prosecutions. They show that the DSS listens and moves when the President talks. It means that people who have lost a lot and can’t be comforted by words are seeing their attackers face the law. This is a big step forward for the Criminal Justice System in a country that has long been used to getting away with mass murders.

Gunmen attacked St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, on June 5, 2022. They killed more than 50 churchgoers and hurt many more. The DSS is currently prosecuting Idris Omeiza, Al Qasim Idris, Jamiu Abdulmalik, Abdulhaleem Idris, and Momoh Otuho Abubakar in the Federal High Court in Abuja for their alleged connections to the attack.
Sani Yusuf, the sixth suspect, was on the run for almost four years and became one of Nigeria’s most wanted criminals. The DSS, on the other hand, caught him in February in the Iguosa community along Powerline in Ovia North LGA of Edo State.

The DSS is also working hard to prosecute Khalid Al Barnawi and four other people who are thought to have bombed the United Nations building in Abuja on August 26, 2011. This case is also in front of the Federal High Court in Abuja.

More than 20 people from different countries died in the attack, and more than 70 others were hurt. People think that Al-Barnawi helped start Jama’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid Da’wah Wa’l-Jihad, the Boko Haram Islamist terrorist group. Mohammed Bashir Saleh, Umar Mohammed Bello (also known as Datti), Mohammed Salisu, and Yakubu Nuhu (also known as Bello Maishayi) are also charged with Al-Barnawi.

The DSS, through its lawyer Alex Iziyon, SAN, also asked for an expedited trial to show how serious the Service was about the terrorism trial. The Service said it was ready for a quick end to the trial.

It’s true that armed groups can’t survive on ideology alone; they also need weapons, ammo, and supply lines. The DSS has been going after those pipelines on purpose, and recent arrests show how well-organized those networks are.

In Zamfara in January 2026, a well-known arms smuggler named Abubakar Umar (Dangada) was stopped with a large cache of weapons from Niger Republic. In May 2026, a joint operation on the Asaba-Onitsha expressway stopped a truck that was said to be carrying more than 164,000 live cartridges that were going to IPOB/ESN networks. These hauls, which include motor parks, border routes, and highways, show that a DSS is getting into every part of the supply chain.

In April 2026, operatives caught 25-year-old Nafisa Usman at a motor park in Kano. She was said to be bringing 200 rounds of ammunition from Lafia in Nasarawa State to Kankara in Katsina, which is a known bandit corridor. According to security sources, she helped make deals worth more than ₦5 million, using Unguwa Uku motor park as a stopover for shipments going to Kankara forest. She was stopped before the package could get to its destination. Halima Haliru Umar pleaded guilty in a similar case that went all the way to court. She had sent 302 rounds of live ammunition to a bandit leader, which was illegal. The Chief Magistrate Court in Taraba then sentenced three other arms traffickers that the DSS had arrested to ten years in prison without the option of a fine.

The trial of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the banned Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), has caused a lot of controversy in Nigeria in recent years. The Federal High Court in Abuja found him guilty of terrorism in November 2025 and sentenced him to life in prison. Several well-known Igbo leaders have been going to court to get a political solution.

There has been a big improvement in security in the Southeast states since Kanu was found guilty. The Monday sit-at-home orders, which violently enforced the closure of markets, schools, banks, and gas stations every Monday since 2021, ended for good in February 2026. Kanu himself gave the order from his prison cell in Sokoto.

SBM Intelligence, Nigeria’s top geopolitical research firm, found that the weekly closures between 2021 and early 2025 cost the country over ₦7.6 trillion. This money was taken away from one of Nigeria’s most commercially active areas for no good reason. Every day of the week, markets in Onitsha, Aba, Nnewi, and other major commercial towns in the Southeast are open. Schools are now open on Mondays. The Nigerian Army has officially said that the arrests of Kanu and Simon Ekpa, an IPOB member convicted in Finland, have made security better. They say that the criminal activities and operational abilities of groups linked to ESN have dropped a lot.
A region that lost more than ₦7 trillion in business because of forced shutdowns is now slowly but surely getting back on its feet.

Taking down terrorist networks takes more than just arresting the foot soldiers. It means taking away the money that keeps them alive. In April 2026, the Federal Government, through the Nigeria Sanctions Committee led by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, released a new list of 48 people and 12 businesses that were named as terrorism financiers. He then told everyone to freeze all related accounts and assets right away.
The list includes people connected to ISWAP, Boko Haram, Ansaru, and IPOB, which are all groups that are a threat to Nigeria’s security. The ways of getting money that were shown are shocking: cryptocurrency and online fraud, handling ransoms from the 2022 Abuja-Kaduna train attack, buying property in several states, and moving money through businesses in the UAE. One suspect recorded ₦61.4 billion in account inflows before sending tens of millions to terrorists who had already been found guilty. Designating and freezing these networks goes to the heart of the problem by stopping the money before it ever gets to the field.

Over the past few months, the picture of Nigeria’s security situation has become clearer: the country is starting to seriously punish anyone who chooses violence. Terrorists who used to be thought of as untouchable are now in court. People who used to be able to get weapons without fear of getting caught are now being caught. People who secretly funded massacres are now having their bank accounts frozen. People in communities that saw their loved ones buried without justice are now watching suspects go to jail.
If this strategic momentum keeps going and gets stronger, and the DSS keeps building up its intelligence, speeding up prosecutions, and working more closely with the military, other security agencies, the judiciary, and international partners, the path will lead to something that Nigerians have wanted for a long time but haven’t gotten.

Nigeria spent a long time dealing with insecurity. But the DSS’s current plan shows that it is possible to get rid of insecurity. That there is a future that is worth working toward. The last few months under Oluwatosin Adeola Ajayi show one thing: we can all work together to make Nigeria safe again!